Contemplating my decision to leave Christianity (churches, atheist, Jerusalem, Israel)
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CCC, your naivety really puts a smile on my face. I enjoy reading your posts. Perhaps I should have titled the thread "Contemplating your decision to stick with Jesus even when everything fails". Yes, that 2000-year-old promise from wealthy corpulent churchmen living high on the hog on your $$$$$'s that even if things don't pan out for you and your loved ones here on earth, there's always eternal life with Jesus in heaven to look forward to. Just don't stop those tithes from coming in the meantime. Well, God is very generous to give me more time to use my efforts to demonstrate to people why they shouldn't believe in him. I have no doubt that when I stand before him and he asks me, "What did you do with that second chance I gave you" and I reply, "I chased 10,000 people away from Jesus" he will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
i actually think your posts have the opposite effect. rather than driving people away, it draws people closer.
because the posts result in an outpouring of compassion, a recognition and appreciation of all that is precious and holy.
as the saying goes, "they meant it for evil, God uses it for good"
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 11-14-2022 at 01:23 PM..
All prayers must be asked according to God's will.
1 John 5:14
Ah! So the millions of good Christian parents who pray for their dying child to be healed are going against God's will when they ask God to intervene? Got it.
i actually think your posts have the opposite effect. rather than driving people away, it draws people closer.
because the posts result in an outpouring of compassion and an appreciation of all that is holy.
as the saying goes, "they meant it for evil, God uses it for good"
I guess that explains why a Pew study found that in 1970 90% of Americans professed to be Christian, 50 years later in 2020 that percent had dropped to 64% and Pew projects that at that rate of decline only 35% of Americans will profess Jesus in 2070. Care to guess based on that trajectory what it will be 50 years after that in 2120? Try 0%.
I could not rep you again, thrill, so I will say publicly what a wonderfully honest orig post.
I love honesty! I dislike blind faith. (And the subsequent nonsense.)
But, I do respect people 'trying' to believe and trying to be good. Sweet, but they fall so short...
like children reaching out in the dark...for the candy bar.
I can not comment very much ...since, I am not a Christian nor Catholic, (anymore), why?
I do not believe in what makes a person a Christian ...
the only definition ever given ...The Nicene Creed.
However, I DO love Jesus as my Guru, teacher, Master...and followed his teachings, agya, advice, instructions...and found them to WORK!
So, I don't care about proofs...I care about IF what he said to do actually worked.
And I found, Whoa ---they did.
And I am a very happy person now...he said he came for us to have an abundant life...well ...now it is.
BUT, I have never met a Christian that did what he said to do!!! Ha!!
And I have counseled many so know a lot!
(Not to be cryptic)...I will give just ONE simple example: Not one had ever spent a day, not a week to
Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first.
So they came to me troubled, depressed, despondent, oh my...but they had not done ONE thing Jesus
said to do.
Not ONE.
They did and we followed all the instructions in James. Still the illness persisted. It wasn't until I saw a doctor and took some medicine he prescribed that I was healed. God didn't heal me, the doctor and the medicine he prescribed did. Actually that was when the first cracks in the foundation of my faith started. But I put it away and didn't think about it.
Where do you think medicine comes from? Science? The Creator sent you a doctor who healed you with medicine. Prayers answered. Intervention does not always come in "supernatural" form or when you think you want it. There are synchronicities every minute of your life if you choose to acknowledge them. And you don't have to have religion to experience it.
I am not trying to convince you that religion is the way to go, Personally I think the Bible has been fussed with and manipulated by Popes and Kings. I once asked myself: if God, The Creator, was indeed Love (which is purely unconditional) and we were created in its image (DNA) then he/she wouldn't be punishing us and demanding our worship and adoration or sending us to an never-ending hell and torture. The Bible is man-made. Yes, there are truths in it and good guidance for living life. But for me, fire and brimstone is not the Truth.
Meeting our maker is meeting Love in its purest essence. Jesus is a Master and not the only one to come to us. Jesus does exist. The "God" that we are led to pray to is not the only god we have had for Earth. There were many gods. Some benevolent and some not so much. I am not talking mythology here.
I encourage you to research what and who Masters are. They are not all Saints or Christian. Be open to alternative explanations for our existence and purpose. You have already cast aside religious doctrine. Go for more knowledge and explore with an open mind and be discerning by using your innate intuition for truth. Become a Seeker.
No one's future is predetermined. There are only probabilities of the consequences of our actions. It can't be predetermined because we have free-will and can choose which road to travel and no one knows when reaching the fork in the road which direction we will take. Whether we choose left or right there are a whole host of different probabilities for each choice.
CCC, your naivety really puts a smile on my face. I enjoy reading your posts. Perhaps I should have titled the thread "Contemplating your decision to stick with Jesus even when everything fails". Yes, that 2000-year-old promise from wealthy corpulent churchmen living high on the hog on your $$$$$'s that even if things don't pan out for you and your loved ones here on earth, there's always eternal life with Jesus in heaven to look forward to. Just don't stop those tithes from coming in the meantime. Well, God is very generous to give me more time to use my efforts to demonstrate to people why they shouldn't believe in him. I have no doubt that when I stand before him and he asks me, "What did you do with that second chance I gave you" and I reply, "I chased 10,000 people away from Jesus" he will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
i actually think your posts have the opposite effect. rather than driving people away, it draws people closer.
because the posts result in an outpouring of compassion, a recognition and appreciation of all that is precious and holy.
as the saying goes, "they meant it for evil, God uses it for good"
Christ changed the entire world structure. No other human being had done that. Time itself was changed from BC to AD.
So God did not jump for you when you called. You say he never healed you but the Doctor and their medicine did. Who do you think put the Doctor there and made the medicine available. Have you ever read the whole Bible? I would say no you have not.
We don't measure time in BC/AD anymore. After the Enlightenment it was changed to CE--Common Era.
Why is a Christian's only fallback, "God sent the doctor"? Maybe God didn't do anything. Maybe science sent the doctor. Ever think of that?
There is a great difference between mass manipulation disguised as organized religion, and pure spirituality grounded in faith. I left the former and adopted the latter, but I never left God. I just look at it through a different lens now.
After 34 years of heavily exploring Christianity, it became clear to me that organized religion is nothing more than a business. They use fear-mongering to keep you (and your money) tethered to them, much like trauma bonding or Stockholm syndrome. Some denominations are just better at it than others (I'm looking at you, Baptists and Catholics). This epiphany was solidified during another manipulative service where my patience (and faith) had been tested one too many times. Out of decorum, I endured the entire "show", but when it ended, I left with rage flowing through my veins.
I've since packed up my soul and moved away from organized religion. I no longer attend church any more than once or twice a year. The years that followed led to my discovery that most stories in the Bible (and the Torah and Quran) were stolen from parables deriving from other religions much older than Christianity, Judaism, and obviously Islam. The stories were simply tweaked to fit the narrative of whoever is telling it. The sad thing is, most religions use the same stories and the same method to hook their prey. They just give their protagonist(s) a different name.
I don't personify God as "the old man in the sky" who watches our every move. I've come to understand that God is the powerful, omnipresent, omnipotent (omnipotent in the sense that physics and quantum physics rules) energy that envelops us and gives us life. God doesn't care who wins the superbowl, which direction the stockmarket goes, or even who you marry. God is energy. Energy is life. Life flows through us all. And so it is. But to be clear, life, and the adventures that come with it, is a precious gift; and for that we should all give thanks to God. Christ, Moses, and Abraham, as lovely as the stories are, are just parables used to teach us to value life and be good to one another. Did they exist? Perhaps someone like them did. Perhaps their stories are the stories of hundreds (thousands?) of people rolled into three different protagonists. In that case, yes, lives were sacrificed so that we may learn, so that we may be saved from the torment we inflict upon ourselves. I'm not worried about names (e.g.; Jesus), so much. The point of it was meant to send a clear message: be good to each other, love thy neighbor, treat your body and soul as a sacred temple, and your life - your energy will be rewarded for it.
When you look for the good, you will surely find it. When you send out positivity, it will come back to you. That's the law of attraction.
May peace be with you in the name of The Father (energy), The Son (those/he who died so that you may live), and The Holy Ghost (the spirit that flows through you). ♡
I like the way you think, jen. I hope you got my rep.
I could not rep you again, thrill, so I will say publicly what a wonderfully honest orig post.
I love honesty! I dislike blind faith. (And the subsequent nonsense.)
But, I do respect people 'trying' to believe and trying to be good. Sweet, but they fall so short...
like children reaching out in the dark...for the candy bar.
I can not comment very much ...since, I am not a Christian nor Catholic, (anymore), why?
I do not believe in what makes a person a Christian ...
the only definition ever given ...The Nicene Creed.
However, I DO love Jesus as my Guru, teacher, Master...and followed his teachings, agya, advice, instructions...and found them to WORK!
So, I don't care about proofs...I care about IF what he said to do actually worked.
And I found, Whoa ---they did.
And I am a very happy person now...he said he came for us to have an abundant life...well ...now it is.
BUT, I have never met a Christian that did what he said to do!!! Ha!!
And I have counseled many so know a lot!
(Not to be cryptic)...I will give just ONE simple example: Not one had ever spent a day, not a week to
Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first.
So they came to me troubled, depressed, despondent, oh my...but they had not done ONE thing Jesus
said to do.
Not ONE.
I appreciate your sentiments, Miss Hepburn. I am not an easy person to read I admit. Christians absolutely drip with contempt for me, as anyone would whose hero's credibility is being shot down in flames by someone.
Some people get something good out of Jesus, I realize this and I encourage them to stick with him. I always say, "Use whatever is at your disposal to get to the end of another extremely difficult day in this miserable wretched life, whether it is sex, drugs, rock & roll, and yes, even Jesus." Just know both sides of the story before you (meaning anyone) make any commitments to stick with Jesus for life.
I detect that you have been able to get past the Fundamentalists' caricature of Jesus being a real divine god-man who walked the earth and performed miracles. I can assure anyone who is reading this that if a god-man had really caused an army of zombie saints to rise out of their graves and march on Jerusalem and started appearing to thousands of inhabitants--their ragged rotten shrouds dragging behind them, eyeballs hanging out of their sockets and ribs showing through their black mottled skin, all this courtesy of Matthew's incredibly inventive imagination for the macabre--then somebody, whether Roman or Jew, SOMEBODY would have recorded this terrifying event. But outside of Matthew no one, not even the other gospel writers know of this. Why? Because it never happened, as simple as that. So much for the believability of the gospel stories.
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Well, God is very generous to give me more time to use my efforts to demonstrate to people why they shouldn't believe in him. I have no doubt that when I stand before him and he asks me, "What did you do with that second chance I gave you" and I reply, "I chased 10,000 people away from Jesus" he will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." 
