I was raised in church, married a Christian, raised my kids in church and currently teach Bible at a Christian school. At the end of this school year (May 2020) I plan to resign as a teacher and stop attending church for one full year. At the end of that year I plan to have my name removed from the church role and afterwards make my atheism public. I love the philosphy, ethics and the culture surrounding Christianity. I just can't live a lie any more. It just can't be healthy. This invisible and silent God dude offers me nothing. I love the Bible and learn a lot from it but the God dude in that book either doesn't exist or has no interest in me. Church attendance is more burdensome than it used to be. I learn more from the Bible studying independently. Kindergarten might be fun for a 6 year old but is painfully boring to a 40 year old.
Any questions? I have lots more to say but I already feel like the post was too long.
I call total and complete bullshit on this clown.
Nobody legitimate thinks their commitment and faith has been detrimental to themselves and their family....NOBODY!
I respectfully disagree.
A lot of former pastors have joined the Clergy Project, for example, having regretted the years that they and their families spent in the church.
To turn atheist after years in the church is to shed an identity. Killing the old self must be difficult; it leads to shunning and isolation, maybe even suicide; people need community.
Of course, I don't mean identity as a Christian so much as I mean identity as a church-goer or leader.
People do it.
No doubt...people do leave the church to pursue a life of sin without the guilt. This happens all the time. The church compels folks to be and do better...some grow tired of being and doing better and the level of accountability that comes with that. In these times it is not simple to live a life that God is proud of. I get it...but for one to imply that the church has held them back is just plain retarded....The church only helps people be and do better...the church is only effective in such when people are there to be and do better.
Atheists don't pursue a life of sin. Sin matters not one whit to them. They don't believe in it.
True, the church has been a tremendous asset to civilization. And by the church, of course, I mean the body, first transformed by the Holy Spirit so as to transform the world. Christians had in their ranks a new and unbridled power of regeneration. The Holy Spirit is freedom (
2 Cor 3:17). He is a liberating influence that God unleashed on the earth through His living vessels sculpted for honorable use to do good works (
2 Tm 2:21).
In the words of the Master himself, the Holy Spirit is the power of forgiveness and Spirit of truth (
Jn 20:22-23; 14:17). He is the power of a divinely-inspired ethical standard that ultimately relegated the apostasy of the Jews and the moral relativism of the pagans to the dustbin of history.
The church on the street corner, on the other hand, is quite different. It is a weekly Sunday school and the same tired message from the pulpit. Naturally, unbelievers would fall away from that.