When I was in seminary I had come to a very similar place as now... finding the intellectual support for biblical inerrancy to be very weak. And once that is gone, well, a lot of things become fuzzy. I drifted aimlessly for awhile, but still wanted a connection with god, whatever he/she might be. It was a traumatic experience to lose my faith. It was horrible. It's not something I wanted to happen. That's when I got into spiritualism. There I seemed to find something that was a real, direct experience with the supernatural. It was experientially-based belief, not dogma-based. It was something to fill the void.
Then when I had an encounter with a hyper-charismatic prophetess woman I suddenly believed that Christianity could be like spiritualism... direct experiential connection with the supernatural. Plus, I could combine it with all the bible knowledge I had and have the "truth" to go along with the experience. It was the complete package. Add to that the fact that I was in a very low point of my life, with the divorce, and mounting debt and poor job/career situation. This is exactly what I needed. I was flying high for awhile, being a true true believer living life in the supernatural realm moment by moment. Disillusionments with that hyper-spiritual approach gradually crept in, as many of the woman's prophecies didn't materialize, and things that I had named and claimed didn't happen.
I left that environment and settled into a mainstream mega-church that my kids liked, got hooked up with a job at new life that i really liked, and just went on my way living a christian life, doing christian things, but with more of a sense of "supercharged" to it all than I had experienced before. I relied on my supernatural direct experience as the foundation of my faith. None of my previous intellectual questions had been answered, but I didn't seem to care. I just "knew," believing that God/Holy Spirit had invaded my life, opened my spiritual eyes, etc. Interestingly, I consistently held to a view that said you can't reason someone into the kingdom, you can't prove it to them... it's something they have to experience... it's something that god has to do to/for them. I didn't think apologetics was of much use.
What led to my faith crisis?
- Unending financial stress. All the prayer in the world didn't help. It just kept getting worse and worse.
- Deep depression. All the prayer in the world didn't help, even from the world-acclaimed Christian Healing Ministries. The only thing that has helped is medication.
- The teachings in the bible about divorce and submission. It was becoming more and more difficult to reconcile what the Bible said with what I thought was best for my clients.
I read the whole New Testament in a month. It did not help. It just increased my questions. I prayed and begged god for help. I asked many people to pray for me. It did not help.
So, when my faith is based on my experience, and my experience falls apart, what do I do? I turned to the more traditional methods for bolstering one's beliefs... apologetics. What we believe and why. But I did not want to have my head in the sand and only look at things that would prop up my faith. I wanted to really know what was true, so I dug deeply into both sides of the faith/Christianity/Bible issue. It did not help. It raised more questions, and gave me less certainty. So, when your experience falls apart, and the traditional intellectual arguments ring hollow, what do you do?
Then I was in that Jewish roots study for 10 weeks. I dug deeply into that issue. This forced me to look at the OT much closer than I had before. If I ever had issues with the OT in the past, I just dismissed it as old covenant... we have a new and improved version now. What was the outcome of looking at the OT more closely?
- The 613 laws are crazy. They're just weird. If you don't believe me, try living them.
- The god portrayed in the OT is crazy. He's mean, arbitrary, whimsical, petty, jealous, vain, and bloodthirsty. I'm not saying this because of anything I have heard from others. I'm just looking at what the Bible says he did and how he acted. I imagine a 4 year-old playing with toy soldiers, ordering them around, smacking them if they get out of line, etc.
- Genesis 1-11 is very mythological. In other words, the stories seem much more like fables than literal history. And they mirror stories in other cultures that pre-dated the Biblical stories. The problem with this is that the rest of the Bible treats Genesis 1-11 as literal, factual history. Since then I have done a lot of study on the origins of the Bible, old and new testaments.
The upshot of all this is not that I do or don't believe in a god, but I have lost my faith in the Bible as an inspired, infallible, inerrant document. Having lost that, and questioning a lot of my previous experience that I ascribed to the supernatural, has left me in no man's land. Not a fun place to be, but I'd rather be here than somewhere false.
The worst part has been losing the fellowship. All my good friends were Bible-believing evangelical Christians. We can't be close like we used to be. And if I am myself, they are bewildered, or try to convert me, etc. Ugh. I need to find new friends.
I could go into a lot more details, but that's my personal faith story in a nutshell.
It does seem to me that this doctrine of the total inerrancy of the Scripture is a huge stumbling block to the faith of many sincere people.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know the early church did not even teach the inerrancy of the Scripture, and this belief only came more to the forefront at the time of the reformation centuries later. It didn't really pick up huge steam until the last century with the rise of fundamentalism.
I mean there are churches out here that honestly think that people are not true Christian believers unless they hold to inerrancy, and also believe that all parts of the Scripture must be interpreted literally.
Do you think that things might have turned out differently if you had not come from a fundamentalist background?
Becky.
Becky!
ReplyDeleteWelcome to EI.
Well, it's so hard to know what might have happened if I had grown up in a more liberal environment. One thing for sure, I wouldn't have gone through anywhere near the amount of anguish I've been through in my life over religious issues.
With fundamentalism you have to be right, know you're right, and hyper-defend yourself from all contrary views. Also, you have to believe the bible is 100% error free in all things, and again, rigorously defend against all competing evidence.
All this breeds lots of mental exertion. But not mental activity that generates more clarity or truth or learning. It's mainly defensive. Warding off cognitive dissonance.
If I had grown up in a more liberal Christian environment I doubt it would have been difficult to go along with it... I mean what's not to like? You get all the benefits of a good God, throw out the parts of the bible you don't like or don't fit with science... If you want to believe the resurrection was just a spiritual metaphor... I mean, what's there to reject? You can pretty much believe anything you want. The bottom line beliefs might be that there IS a god, there was a person named Jesus, and the bible may contain some helpful things to help us understand them, but we're not sure.
So I don't think I would have had any of the mental anguish I've had throughout my life. I would probably find some charming things about god and jesus in the bible that I would cling to if I found that helpful to me. I don't think I would have been so concerned about "truth." It wouldn't matter so much.
However, having been a fundamentalist, it's easier to see how this wishy washy approach is pretty meaningless. And most of us former fundies want to KNOW what the truth is. We don't believe what we used to believe, but we desperately want to know WHAT to believe. Ambiguity is not our strong suit, especially when it comes to spiritual/eternal matters.
And why would the god of the whole universe make it all so ambiguous in the first place? That leads us to believe he might not be there at all.
So, although I am much more comfortable in an agnostic place at the moment than a place of "truth," the desire for certainty still haunts.
When you have inerrancy, you have a lot of certainty. You may disagree about what the bible says, but at least you believe you know where the answers are. That's comforting.
When you lose inerrancy, you have to judge every piece of data in the bible... Is it true? Or was it altered by editors? Was this part just made up? Was it just these people's interpretation of what happened? etc. etc. For me, the slippery slope slides quickly to "this is all just legends and people's efforts to interpret their experience." So, I don't find an errant bible all that helpful.
If you don't have solidity in the bible, you turn to experience, reason, observation, etc. All of those are just as fallible as the Bible.
Ultimately, there seems to be no clear information from the creator as to what he's about. That in itself is discomforting, and makes me believe he doesn't exist. I mean, if there is a personal being behind this whole universe, world, life... would he not have done a better job revealing himself to the world?
I'm probably in the deist camp at the moment. I think there might be a god behind all this, but I don't think he is actively involved with the world in a tangible way.
That's the end of my book.
Hi, EI.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind welcome. I'm so often not very welcome on the deconversion type blogs, at least not eventually. :)
EI, I'm not really a liberal Christian, at least I don't think of myself in that way. Of course, I suppose all terms are relative. And, viewed through the lens of fundamentalism, the mainstream of the church may even seem liberal.
I see myself just as a bog standard Christian believer, classical orthodox, and evangelical, but not fundamentalist.
To me, the essential statement of Christian faith is the Nicene Creed of the church which I think reflects the apostolic witness, not the inerrancy of Scripture.
I think the center of Christian faith is the church's witness relating to the incarnation, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Because Scripture may contain error, and was not given to be a textbook of science, it doesn't necessarily follow in my thinking that it can not be relied on to give essential witness to things "necessary for salvation."
We also have the testimony of the church fathers as well to consider, apart from Scripture alone.
Have you ever read stuff by the Anglican bishop of Dunham, N.T. Wright?
EI, I do have a sense of where you're at. I have a step-son who is a fundamentalist. He has this conviction if there is one error found in Scripture, the whole book is found to be false, and unreliable. This is so alien to my thinking. I wish I could help. To me this is a spiritual train wreck waiting to happen.
I've tried to explain that it is not as if I am arbitrarily trying to pick, and choose which parts of scripture to believe in accord with my own preference, and sensibilities, but am honestly also attempting to consider things like the genre, context, culture of the times, etc. To me this is taking the Scripture seriously, and is honoring to God.
For instance, I don't think that these passages which are often used to clobber gay people are actually referring to sexual orientation that we know today, but are referencing a very different situation altogether. So far, this has all fallen on deaf ears, as far as my step-son is concerned.
Sometimes I feel he probably thinks that I saved by "the skin of my teeth." But, I know Jesus Christ as my Savior, and Lord, and have committed my whole life to Him, EI.
My prayers,and every encouragement for you in your searching, EI. To me this shows that you are taking a relationship with God very seriously. I think that the Lord honors all honest questioning, and searching after Him, for truth.
It's a good thing.
Becky.
Becky,
ReplyDeleteIf I may be so bold as to speak for the other deconverting bloggers...
We are here because of heart-wrenching struggles trying to hold onto a faith that had been very dear to us. Most of us are not "trying" to lose our faith... just the opposite.
For one reason or another we ran into information that made us wonder whether some of our beliefs were true or not. So we decided to dig deeper, to try and shore up our beliefs and get more certainty and reassurance.
Unfortunately, for many of us, that search did not lead to more certainty, but less. Traditional Christian arguments and defenses for the faith rang hollow.
We write our blogs to have a platform for expressing our questions, doubts, findings, emotions... our personal experience with it all. We don't come here to argue, debate, or try to convince anyone of anything. We are just trying to work out our own salvation.
We express empathy, care, and concern for the other bloggers in similar shoes. But we don't really try to give them answers or prove them wrong. We just go along on the journey with them. It helps us hold on to our sanity.
Most of us have looked very deeply and thought very critically about all sides of these issues. We're not ignorant. Typically speaking, our problem lies not in having too little information. It may, in fact, lie in having too much information. Information that we, and many other Christians, may have never been exposed to.
So when someone like Becky comes along (and there are others like you) and tries to give us information or convince us of this or that... well, it just seems awkward. No matter how nice you try to be with it all it still comes across as, "I'm sorry you're having such a struggle. Thankfully, I have the answer, and I'd like to tell you what it is." It's quaint.
We're all too familiar with the approach. Remember, we were all once card-carrying evangelicals! We know how to witness and evangelize and infiltrate and persuade and proselytize. Now that we're on the receiving end, it's like a gnat that comes along that we have to politely swat away.
So, in general, we don't see Beckys as adding much to the conversation. We'd be more receptive if we felt you were on the journey with us vs. on a mission to help us. We'd be more interested in hearing you tell your story than having you critique ours. (Geez, I sound pretty emergent! lol)
And from my point of view, my gut reaction is that the Beckys here have more doubts and questions than they may be aware of. Why are they here in the first place? Maybe in answering our questions and doubts you are trying to answer the questions in your own heart that you haven't had the courage to ask? It's just a hunch.
If that's not the case, and you are here purely to help, my recommendation is that you write up your story... how you came to believe what you believe... post it, and end with, "If anything I've said speaks to you and you'd like to talk further, here's how to reach me." At least then you'd have a chance to be taken seriously, might possibly have something in your story that interests someone and generates more conversation, and you wouldn't be seen as a gnat. (Pretty metaphor, I know.)
So, you're welcome anytime on my blog. I just thought I'd give you some feedback that might help you get better reception than it sounds like you've experienced.
Thank you, EI. What you're saying makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm shortly leaving on vacation, and probably won't be blogging for quite sometime after that.
Here is part of the story of my faith journey. I was reared in a pretty mainstream church as a child, but became an agnostic when I was nine or ten, and didn't actually come to personal faith in Christ until I was a young adult.
Definitely had a lot of questions, and struggles around faith, and science, and especially struggled with how a kind, and loving God could allow suffering in the world. At one point, I thought Christians were fools, and wondered how in the world anyone could think that the death of one man could make such a difference in anyone's life today.
I would say that for me coming to faith was a long process. I was very impacted by the work of C.S. Lewis, and the preaching of Dr. Billy Graham at the time.
I did graduate from the most progressive seminary of my denomination at the time in the country, and so my studies presented another challenge to sort out what I would come to believe.
I am of the firm opinion that God uses everything in our lives, and that He is faithful to complete His work in us overtime.
It does seem to me EI that none of us have arrived, and that we are not going to have all the answers available in this life. I give my parents, and Sunday school teachers a great deal of credit. They never discouraged any of my questioning, or honest doubts. I was reared to think this was normal, and to this day, I think doubt and questioning are part of mature faith. I'm ok with a lot of ambiguity.
We are all really on a spiritual journey together, and can learn from each other. I have no doubt of it. But, I"m not sure that the way for me personally to do this is by blogging.
It is too difficult to really understand, and meet folks where they're at across the internet. There is no body language available to tell if someone is beginning to take offense. It's hard to know a lot about someone's background..why they might react in a certain way.
So many of these problems I have with folks taking offense or misunderstanding a comment seem to be pretty non-existent in relating with secular people in my own family, or with friends that I know in real life and time. I'm sure there is a reason for this.
EI it does seem to me that you have a ministry here supporting other folks that are on a similar journey. Maybe it's people going through this whole deconversion process that can offer the most support, and empathy to each other.
I do want to let you know that at least one denomination, the Episcopal church, I'm sure there are others, is very open to people who are questioning. They do not conduct orthodox litmus tests at the door. If you are ever interested, I'm sure you would be more than very welcome.
Becky.
Becky,
ReplyDeleteEvangelically Incorrect left you another educational comment...like so many others you have received from several of us.
Some of us have shared similar feedback with you for years now.
We've allowed you to participate on our blogs, though often we'd probably rather pull our hair out.
It's not because we think you're a delusional person, it's because you say the same thing over and over again. You do Becky. You go from one deconversion blog &/or doubter blog to another saying the same thing over and over. And when we point it out, you don't like it, cry wolf and take a break for awhile, only to return and start the entire Becky Project all over again.
We've shared with you, we've communicated with you, we've tried with you, but Becky, people stop trying when it seems that their sharing goes in one ear and out the other.
Zoe, I think there is a much deeper dynamic going on. I can share the very same things with people I know in real life, and time, and my comments only lead to an interesting discussion, or maybe agreeing to disagree.
ReplyDeleteThere is none of this offense, or sense that you are "driving me crazy," please don't come here again.
I think it's the personal relationship, and knowing each other on a deeper level that's missing.
I keep coming back because I really care. And, yet at the same time I see the problems in all this as well. So, I'm ambivalent.
Becky.
Evangelist Becky,
ReplyDeleteI went through an episcopal phase 18 years ago. I have thought that if I can stomach any church right now it might be that one.
The problem I have going to church though is that it throws all my doubts in my face... Everything that is said or done makes me think, "Well, that's just made up by men." On one hand, the ritual and stuff make it comforting; on the other, makes it seem very "religious!"
Another way to say it is that in an environment like that I am also forced to confront the fact that probably nobody in the room views the bible as inerrant, so what do we agree on, or what is our source of truth? The Book of Common Prayer? yay. I do agree with you though, I probably would be accepted there with all my questions and doubts, even if they weren't answered.
Lately, I was thinking of going to some atheist meetings, just to get some fellowship! That's the think I miss the most lately... Pretty much all my family and friends are conservative evangelicals... and I find I have less and less in common with them anymore... So I've lost my support system. Sucks!
What do you believe about God/Jesus, and why?
If I may Evangelically Incorrect ... and if not, banish my comment to the nether regions of deletion utopia. :-)
ReplyDeleteBecky, if you are still around. Never ever has any of us thought that you don't care.
I think in real-time it's easier to control our interactions with others and whether we have a conversation with them or not.
The "driving us crazy" part comes because it's the same thing again and again. It feels like stalking. We try to interact, only to have the same conversation with you again, on yet another post. And it leaves us wondering, do I respond, *again* or do I ignore her *again* ???
If I respond, will I cause offense *again* ... if I respond, will I come across as a class-A jerk, if I respond, will I just get more of the *same* from her? If I ignore her, won't that come across as rude?
When I sit with my close friend, a Christian, we don't have all this tension in our conversations because we aren't trying to do apologetics for Jesus. As well, when the conversation comes up, we can limit it if either of us feels it's territory we don't want to deal with on any specific day.
Blogging is different. Especially blogging that is theme specific. It doesn't involve a day of shopping with one another. It doesn't involve sipping some tea together in our living rooms, while we discuss the blankets we are crocheting or knitting. It doesn't involve walking on the beach and collecting shells. It doesn't involve sitting with a sick friend, helping with a meal or offering a shoulder to cry on when a family member is sick. Blogging can't be the same as real-time relationships.
Our conversations don't evolve Becky. They can't because deconversion blogs are about deconversion. That's why your comments are the same as you travel from one to another and that's why when we encounter your *repeat* comments, we sit back and go, 'Oh not again.'
You are free to post on most of our blogs. We just don't know how to carry on any conversation with you in regards to the religious topic anymore.
Zoe,
ReplyDeleteI might consider walking on the beach and collecting shells with evangelist becky!
Unless we keep picking up the same shell over and over and over again? lol
Guys, I've been on vacation in the mountains, and have not always had access to a computer. Apologies about this time delay. I have a job interview tomorrow, and hope to be able to more fully respond to your comment later in the week, EI.
ReplyDeleteZoe, I understand. I'm sure that if we knew each other apart from the internet, we could be very good friends. Actually I think we would have a lot in common. But, it's true, after discussing these specific issues for a few years, it does come down to a lot of "repeat comments," on both sides.
And, it does seem counter productive to keep picking up those same shells over, and over. At a certain point what more can be said, or shared from either side of this divide.
Becky.
Mountains...no internet. Sounds peaceful to me.
ReplyDeleteAll the best with your job interview.
Counter-productive. Yes. So, I'm not trying to be rude when I no longer respond. Okay?
Zoe, I have never thought you unkind or rude. Please don't give this another thought. You are free to respond or not to respond. It's all ok by me. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks about the job interview. I should hear shortly.
Becky.
EI, you are in a difficult place. All of my empathy.
ReplyDeleteA good number of the people in my family are not Christians at all, or at least not evangelical Christians who feel strongly about their faith.
Sometimes it is easier to get along with these folks than one of my young step-sons who is more of a fiery conservative persuasion. I listen, and ask a lot of questions. LOL
Temperment does seem to me a huge factor. Some people are simply, inherently more comfortable with questions, and with ambiguity in faith.
Interestingly enough my husband has many of these same issues with TEC that you've mentioned. Most weeks I do attend a more conservative church with him. I'm at the place where I think that no church is going to be able to meet everyone's needs.
I like the freedom that is there in the Episcopal church, but I've also accepted that it does come at the cost of unity around the gospel. Good, and bad..EI.
These days I'm much more interested in how I"m individually walking out my faith, than in the convictions of everyone in the church around me.
One thing that I've learned from hanging out on these deconversion blogs is that no one can know another person's heart and mind before the Lord, if I didn't see this before.
The most apparently convicted, and articulate of evangelical preachers may be an agnostic/atheist at heart, or heading in that direction. And, because people don't go around employing terms like "saved," or "born again," doesn't mean they are far from God, and "don't know the Lord," as is thought by many evangelicals.
My personal conviction is that the universe shows such complexity, and fine tuning toward life, that it strongly points toward a creator. I can't think that everything we see, nature has formed itself. Most cosmologists agree that the universe is not eternal, that it did begin at a certain point in space, and time.
As a young person, I was very interested in astronomy, and I think it was this awe for the stars, and a love of the natural world that first drew me to God.
In time, I came to accept the church's witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to the conviction that He is truly God, and truly man. I think that Christian apologists really do make some pretty strong arguments here for the historicity of the resurrection. Although, of course, no argument can ever be completely persuasive, and airtight. No question, there is an element of faith that is there.
I do want to share that my faith is not at all tied to things like the total inerrancy of the Scripture. This was never an important part of my thinking.
My undergraduate major was cultural anthropology focused in comparative religion, so I've studied the major religions, and philosophies of the world. None seem to me to make better sense than the Christian faith.
Of course, I'm leaving out tons of subjective ways that I believe God has worked in my life. That's a book..
But, EI, I don't want to convey the impression that I never have doubts concerning the Christian faith, or think that I have all the answers, either. It just seems to me that doubt is really an aspect of mature faith, and that it's more than ok to question. It's good, and normal.
You're not alone, EI.
Probably I'm repeating myself, here as Zoe has mentioned..:) But, I figure it's ok since we haven't talked before, EI.
Becky.
Evangelist Becky,
ReplyDeleteCultural anthropology focused in comparative religion sounds fascinating! I'm jealous.
Oh, EI, it was the most interesting course of study in the world.. I loved it. Of course,what are you going to do with a BA in anthropology? My dad was right. LOL So, I want on to seminary, and ended up being a social worker/counselor..like you. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's all good. Hey, I did get hired for the position as a caseworker with Family and Children Services. Just heard from them today. I"ll be working with mentally challenged folks helping them with their parenting, and other issues.
Becky